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For hunters, pythons were few and far between

Jim Turner of Bradenton and Dusty Crum of Myakka City try to control two Burmese Pythons they found next to each other on a canal bank, while hunting partner Bill Booth of Myakka City records them on his video camera.

Published: Sunday, February 10, 2013 at 5:17 p.m.

Last Modified: Sunday, February 10, 2013 at 5:17 p.m.

THE FLORIDA EVERGLADES - In all his years on the job, Rob Van Houdt had never seen anything like the human circus that unfolded at levees L-67A and L-67C over the past four weeks.

"There was a guy out here the other morning with a live chicken on a leash, trying to lure the snakes out of the water," said Van Houdt, a supervisor with Leno Dredging & Hauling out of Miami.

"I got people walking around with shotguns, kids with guns, one guy riding a bike with a lacrosse basket.

"I got one 70-year-old woman in a black pickup truck, I got three other geriatrics looking for snakes.

"One guy camped out here the other night — that's the first time I've ever heard of anybody doing that. And I don't think half these people know what a snake is."

This was just one glimpse into the intense competition as the celebrated Python Challenge — more than 1,500 hunters of disparate pedigree aiming to destroy as many invasive giant Burmese pythons as they could decapitate — swung into its final weekend.

When the month-long epic concluded Sunday, they were united by the same question: Where were all the snakes?

Hard work

The last numbers released by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission stood at 50.

The tally won't be announced until next Saturday, with wrap-up ceremonies set for Zoo Miami.

Leading the pack in one category — at least unofficially — was Manatee County firefighter Bill Booth and The Cypress Boys. By early weekend, Booth's team had accounted for a whopping total of five dead snakes.

"Honestly, I never thought it'd be this hard," said Booth, 47, a lifelong hunter whose entourage entertained at least two Tampa TV stations, multiple newspapers, National Geographic and Outside magazine.

"I thought we could catch at least one a day."

Even more dispirited was wildlife rescue/trapper Justin Matthews, who was hoping the Python Challenge would be his ticket to "redemption." Three days before the Jan. 12 hunt began, Matthews predicted he'd catch "five to six" of the Asian imports on day one.

With an assist from a trained spotter hawk, the 50-year-old Ellenton resident figured he could roll the sorts of numbers that might make people forget his ill-fated 2009 publicity stunt of staging the capture of his own 14-foot pet python. It backfired and rewarded him with a felony conviction for misusing the 911 emergency line.

"I want to prove to people I'm not a fake," Matthews declared.

But as the Challenge neared an end, his hawk grounded due to a lack of suitable trees for perch surveillance, Matthews' number was zilch.

While biologists such as the University of Florida's Frank Mazotti have steered clear of population estimates, the widely circulated projection that abetted such feverish expectations was that anywhere from 30,000 to 150,000 of the invasive carnivores were eating a swath through the Everglades.

Indeed, a National Academy of Sciences survey indicated that more than 90 percent of the Everglades' mammal population had vanished from 2003 to 2011.

Researchers hope DNA and dietary data from the hunt will shed more light on the mystery.

But as the weekend finale neared, Ian Bartoszek, a biologist at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida in Naples, said just three pythons had been deposited at the facility, a designated dropoff point.

Park ranger Bob DeGross said not a single constrictor had been harvested from Big Cypress National Preserve, which was open to the Python Challenge until Feb. 1.

"I've been here for 20 years and I've only had three (Burmese python) sightings," said DeGross. "The majority are still closer to the east coast because that's the epicenter of the problem."

New York Mike

Then there are others, like David Shealy, who said the pythons were taking the fall for Florida panthers.

Having lost six emus, three turkeys and 18 goats over a 7-day period to the big cats, Shealy called panthers "killing machines" and blames them, not pythons, for the plunge in mammal population.

Shealy runs an adventure tour/campground in Ochopee, but is renowned for his Skunk Ape Research Center, where Florida bigfoot lore has attracted the likes of The Learning Channel and The Discovery Channel.

"There's no wild hogs in Big Cypress anymore. I haven't seen any tracks in 15 years," said Shealy, noting how successful breeding programs have ignited a panther population surge, from about 30 cats in the 1990s to more than 100 today. "But the panther is the state's cash cow, so they say, oh, it must be the python."

"Hmm, could be," deadpanned Dusty Crum, exhausted from a month of dawn 'til dusk hiking and airboating for the elusive reptiles. "But does a skunk ape seem reasonable?"

Crum, of Myakka City, is part of Booth's Cypress Boys crew. The financial hit he took from laying off a month of construction work has been at least partially mitigated by the buzz of catching a snake the first week, despite the serpentine discharge of rancid musk and urine.

"I was high for a day, man," he said. "I had on a perma-grin."

But it's been nearly two grueling weeks since the Cypress Boys' last strike. Camping just a few yards away, at the facility-free Mitchell Landing grounds just off Loop Road, a snowbird named New York Mike thought he knew why the action was so slow.

"The freeze took a lot of 'em out a couple of years ago," asserted the Miami native. "I took my airboat out there" — pointing south, toward the Everglades National Park — "and counted eight dead pythons that couldn't take the weather."

New York Mike does not use his real name because he hunts Burmese pythons illegally. He unfurled the scrolled-carpet of a hide from a snake he killed in 2010, then extracted the creature's severed and perfectly preserved head from a container of alcohol. "Put these together," said New York Mike, "and that's the state record."

The official state record was set last year with the slaying of a 164-pound, 17-foot 7-inch female loaded with 87 eggs.

New York Mike said his catch weighed 169 pounds and had 52 eggs.

"There must've been a hundred people who got wind of it — it was like a big street party here," said New York Mike. "Even the park rangers were taking pictures, but they had to look the other way."

Bigger problems

Everglades National Park to the south was off limits to Python Challenge hunters. But other hunters, labeled "authorized agent volunteers," can forage for pythons year round, so long as they do it for free.

The numbers submitted by authorized agents, and provided by the Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Parks, appear to support New York Mike's theory of deadly weather thinning the tropical herd.

The Burmese python harvests rose steadily over the past decade, from a scant two in 2000 to its 2009 peak of 367. But by the end of November 2012, just 132 had been killed.

"Yeah, they're all over there on that side — that's where they're coming from," said an airboat entrepreneur who called himself Captain Armando, gazing south across Tamiami Trail and into Everglades National Park. "But we've got bigger problems here than pythons; the Everglades is dying."

Captain Armando, like a lot of local residents, is anticipating the completion of a bridge that will release the southerly flow of water long dammed by Tamiami Trail. Bill Booth may have gotten a glimpse of Armando's take on the fragile ecosystem.

"Every little spoil island we visited, we saw three to five dead turtles," said Booth, who hopes to roll the Python Challenge into a Florida wildlife TV series. "One wildlife official said maybe it was otters, but I don't think so. None of them had been eaten, they were still in their shells. I think something else is going on."

Meanwhile, back at L-67, where the 30-mile levee straightaway was littered with spent casings and shells, 69-year-old Mick Marsh from Ohio may as well have been been beating the bushes for ghosts with his 12-gauge. He has bagged bear in Alaska and elephants in Zimbabwe, but this adventure beneath an enervating winter sun felt futile.

"I called my buddy in Ohio and I says I saw 136 snakes today, and he says 'Yeah?' And I says upon further inspection, none of them were real."

Several miles back, in the air-conditioned trailer, supervisor Van Houdt weighed in on the big picture as beeping dump trucks continued to reconfigure the geography, load by limestone load.

"They're just trying to recreate what God did right in the first place," he said. "We screwed it up, and now we're trying to reflood it again."

As a launch platform for hunters in the Python Challenge, L-67A was popular and hard to miss. It is distinguished by a memorial featuring 110 concrete pillars, one for every person who perished in the 1996 crash of ValuJet Flight 592.

The actual crash site is eight miles north. Most of the bodies were never recovered from the Everglades muck. By comparison, Burmese pythons are ubiquitous.

"There's still some mysteries here in this world," said David Shealy, the skunk ape hunter who thinks the snakes are scapegoats for larger mistakes. "One of the things that makes this country so amazing is its ability to keep secrets."

<p><em>THE FLORIDA EVERGLADES</em> - In all his years on the job, Rob Van Houdt had never seen anything like the human circus that unfolded at levees L-67A and L-67C over the past four weeks.</p><p>"There was a guy out here the other morning with a live chicken on a leash, trying to lure the snakes out of the water," said Van Houdt, a supervisor with Leno Dredging & Hauling out of Miami. </p><p>"I got people walking around with shotguns, kids with guns, one guy riding a bike with a lacrosse basket.</p><p>"I got one 70-year-old woman in a black pickup truck, I got three other geriatrics looking for snakes. </p><p>"One guy camped out here the other night — that's the first time I've ever heard of anybody doing that. And I don't think half these people know what a snake is."</p><p>This was just one glimpse into the intense competition as the celebrated Python Challenge — more than 1,500 hunters of disparate pedigree aiming to destroy as many invasive giant Burmese pythons as they could decapitate — swung into its final weekend. </p><p>When the month-long epic concluded Sunday, they were united by the same question: Where were all the snakes?</p><p><b>Hard work</b></p><p>The last numbers released by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission stood at 50. </p><p>The tally won't be announced until next Saturday, with wrap-up ceremonies set for Zoo Miami. </p><p>Leading the pack in one category — at least unofficially — was Manatee County firefighter Bill Booth and The Cypress Boys. By early weekend, Booth's team had accounted for a whopping total of five dead snakes.</p><p>"Honestly, I never thought it'd be this hard," said Booth, 47, a lifelong hunter whose entourage entertained at least two Tampa TV stations, multiple newspapers, National Geographic and Outside magazine.</p><p>"I thought we could catch at least one a day."</p><p>Even more dispirited was wildlife rescue/trapper Justin Matthews, who was hoping the Python Challenge would be his ticket to "redemption." Three days before the Jan. 12 hunt began, Matthews predicted he'd catch "five to six" of the Asian imports on day one.</p><p>With an assist from a trained spotter hawk, the 50-year-old Ellenton resident figured he could roll the sorts of numbers that might make people forget his ill-fated 2009 publicity stunt of staging the capture of his own 14-foot pet python. It backfired and rewarded him with a felony conviction for misusing the 911 emergency line. </p><p>"I want to prove to people I'm not a fake," Matthews declared.</p><p>But as the Challenge neared an end, his hawk grounded due to a lack of suitable trees for perch surveillance, Matthews' number was zilch.</p><p>While biologists such as the University of Florida's Frank Mazotti have steered clear of population estimates, the widely circulated projection that abetted such feverish expectations was that anywhere from 30,000 to 150,000 of the invasive carnivores were eating a swath through the Everglades.</p><p>Indeed, a National Academy of Sciences survey indicated that more than 90 percent of the Everglades' mammal population had vanished from 2003 to 2011. </p><p>Researchers hope DNA and dietary data from the hunt will shed more light on the mystery.</p><p>But as the weekend finale neared, Ian Bartoszek, a biologist at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida in Naples, said just three pythons had been deposited at the facility, a designated dropoff point. </p><p>Park ranger Bob DeGross said not a single constrictor had been harvested from Big Cypress National Preserve, which was open to the Python Challenge until Feb. 1.</p><p>"I've been here for 20 years and I've only had three (Burmese python) sightings," said DeGross. "The majority are still closer to the east coast because that's the epicenter of the problem."</p><p><b>New York Mike</b></p><p>Then there are others, like David Shealy, who said the pythons were taking the fall for Florida panthers.</p><p>Having lost six emus, three turkeys and 18 goats over a 7-day period to the big cats, Shealy called panthers "killing machines" and blames them, not pythons, for the plunge in mammal population.</p><p>Shealy runs an adventure tour/campground in Ochopee, but is renowned for his Skunk Ape Research Center, where Florida bigfoot lore has attracted the likes of The Learning Channel and The Discovery Channel.</p><p>"There's no wild hogs in Big Cypress anymore. I haven't seen any tracks in 15 years," said Shealy, noting how successful breeding programs have ignited a panther population surge, from about 30 cats in the 1990s to more than 100 today. "But the panther is the state's cash cow, so they say, oh, it must be the python."</p><p>"Hmm, could be," deadpanned Dusty Crum, exhausted from a month of dawn 'til dusk hiking and airboating for the elusive reptiles. "But does a skunk ape seem reasonable?"</p><p>Crum, of Myakka City, is part of Booth's Cypress Boys crew. The financial hit he took from laying off a month of construction work has been at least partially mitigated by the buzz of catching a snake the first week, despite the serpentine discharge of rancid musk and urine.</p><p>"I was high for a day, man," he said. "I had on a perma-grin." </p><p>But it's been nearly two grueling weeks since the Cypress Boys' last strike. Camping just a few yards away, at the facility-free Mitchell Landing grounds just off Loop Road, a snowbird named New York Mike thought he knew why the action was so slow.</p><p>"The freeze took a lot of 'em out a couple of years ago," asserted the Miami native. "I took my airboat out there" — pointing south, toward the Everglades National Park — "and counted eight dead pythons that couldn't take the weather."</p><p>New York Mike does not use his real name because he hunts Burmese pythons illegally. He unfurled the scrolled-carpet of a hide from a snake he killed in 2010, then extracted the creature's severed and perfectly preserved head from a container of alcohol. "Put these together," said New York Mike, "and that's the state record."</p><p>The official state record was set last year with the slaying of a 164-pound, 17-foot 7-inch female loaded with 87 eggs. </p><p>New York Mike said his catch weighed 169 pounds and had 52 eggs.</p><p>"There must've been a hundred people who got wind of it — it was like a big street party here," said New York Mike. "Even the park rangers were taking pictures, but they had to look the other way."</p><p><b>Bigger problems</b></p><p>Everglades National Park to the south was off limits to Python Challenge hunters. But other hunters, labeled "authorized agent volunteers," can forage for pythons year round, so long as they do it for free. </p><p>The numbers submitted by authorized agents, and provided by the Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Parks, appear to support New York Mike's theory of deadly weather thinning the tropical herd.</p><p>The Burmese python harvests rose steadily over the past decade, from a scant two in 2000 to its 2009 peak of 367. But by the end of November 2012, just 132 had been killed.</p><p>"Yeah, they're all over there on that side — that's where they're coming from," said an airboat entrepreneur who called himself Captain Armando, gazing south across Tamiami Trail and into Everglades National Park. "But we've got bigger problems here than pythons; the Everglades is dying."</p><p>Captain Armando, like a lot of local residents, is anticipating the completion of a bridge that will release the southerly flow of water long dammed by Tamiami Trail. Bill Booth may have gotten a glimpse of Armando's take on the fragile ecosystem.</p><p>"Every little spoil island we visited, we saw three to five dead turtles," said Booth, who hopes to roll the Python Challenge into a Florida wildlife TV series. "One wildlife official said maybe it was otters, but I don't think so. None of them had been eaten, they were still in their shells. I think something else is going on."</p><p>Meanwhile, back at L-67, where the 30-mile levee straightaway was littered with spent casings and shells, 69-year-old Mick Marsh from Ohio may as well have been been beating the bushes for ghosts with his 12-gauge. He has bagged bear in Alaska and elephants in Zimbabwe, but this adventure beneath an enervating winter sun felt futile.</p><p>"I called my buddy in Ohio and I says I saw 136 snakes today, and he says 'Yeah?' And I says upon further inspection, none of them were real."</p><p>Several miles back, in the air-conditioned trailer, supervisor Van Houdt weighed in on the big picture as beeping dump trucks continued to reconfigure the geography, load by limestone load.</p><p>"They're just trying to recreate what God did right in the first place," he said. "We screwed it up, and now we're trying to reflood it again."</p><p>As a launch platform for hunters in the Python Challenge, L-67A was popular and hard to miss. It is distinguished by a memorial featuring 110 concrete pillars, one for every person who perished in the 1996 crash of ValuJet Flight 592.</p><p>The actual crash site is eight miles north. Most of the bodies were never recovered from the Everglades muck. By comparison, Burmese pythons are ubiquitous. </p><p>"There's still some mysteries here in this world," said David Shealy, the skunk ape hunter who thinks the snakes are scapegoats for larger mistakes. "One of the things that makes this country so amazing is its ability to keep secrets."</p><p><empty></p>